“Metallic liquid hydrogen” sounds like “jumbo shrimp” to me. Isn’t it either metallic hydrogen, or liquid hydrogen?

Well, this perspective might help : does iron stop being metallic when it melts?

Based on its position in the periodic table, hydrogen should be a metal. It turns out that it requires immense pressure to force hydrogen to adopt a metallic state. I do not know if metallic hydrogen has ever been prepared on Earth to prove its existence and probe its properties. From a theoretical point of view, metallic liquid hydrogen is the best explanation of Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, so it seems plausible that it exists.

Is there a 2-state solution at extreme pressures? (and I’d say that metallic hydrogen is a pretty darned cool “core” if you’ve got one!) I always thought you only got metallic hydrogen when it was extremely cold but now I understand it; it’s all gravity and that makes it heat up.

Don’t forget the “pressure” axis on a phase diagram. Liquid CO2, to cite a different example, only exists at hight pressure (at a measly 1 bar, it sublimes straight from solid to gas). And if the pressure is reduced sufficiently, water does the same thing (more or less).

I guess that was a dumb thought I had. When I hear that Saturn/Jupiter have a “core” all my mental imagery of earth-like planets kicks in. Per #33, I didn’t realize that the, um, middle stuff was so hot! But that makes sense. I am now vainly struggling to imagine a humongous lava lamp that’s really hot. Or something.

“Metallic liquid hydrogen” sounds like “jumbo shrimp” to me. Isn’t it either metallic hydrogen, or liquid hydrogen? Is there a 2-state solution at extreme pressures? (and I’d say that metallic hydrogen is a pretty darned cool “core” if you’ve got one!) I always thought you only got metallic hydrogen when it was extremely cold but now I understand it; it’s all gravity and that makes it heat up.

Could it be something like a volcano on the surface, with the storm being a side-effect of heat being dumped into the atmosphere?

Erm . . . what surface?

AFAICT, our best understanding of the interior of gas giants is that, as pressure becomes higher and higher with increasing depth, so the gas gets denser and denser with until the concept of a liquid-gas phase boundary becomes meaningless. IIUC, both Saturn and Jupiter are believed to possess a “rocky” core that may or may not be overlain by a layer of metallic liquid hydrogen. A thick layer (several thousand km thick) of such a fluid would explain Jupiter’s immense magnetic field, for example.

I can’t find a definition but I assume it means; to aggregate (senate) over time (cronos).

Much simpler than that.

Kronos (Cronos) was the Greek equivalent of the god Saturn. “Cronosenate” is to make Saturn-like. The BA practices neologisms all the time for photos posted in his blog, and it’s always more interesting than “click to go see the full-size version of this pic”.